


(you were thinking)

by TheElusiveOllie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Psychological Trauma, tragic abuse of syntax
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveOllie/pseuds/TheElusiveOllie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumple deals with the madness in his head. Takes place between 3x12 and 3x15.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(you were thinking)

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written OUAT before aside from two tiny times and this was difficult and came out kind of terrible. Oh well.

You run your fingernails around the ridge of the bowl but it’s perfect and smooth but that’s not right and you run the spinning wheel fast and fast and fast but no one stops it and _that’s not right that’s not_

_you’re looking for something you were looking and it’s not there but you can’t remember what it is_

(you were thinking)

(and now you’re not)

You must have known words for what you are now at some time but nothing lines up anymore and there’s no way to sort through it, it’s all cluttered thought. There’s no more space in this head, already full to bursting with lifetimes upon lifetimes when it was only built for one.

You know the wheel and the cage, but the bowl is not important _not not not_ but it _pulls_ at you because it reminds you of

_something_

but you

              can’t

                        grasp

              what

                               that   

                                        might

                                                     be

Your head has little fractures and pieces taken out of it but your hands remember how to spin, so you’re at the wheel, always, running the familiar motions through your fingers that know exactly how and what and why, like an old habit.

Sometimes the spinning brings back the memories _that makes it worse_ so you stop and think think think about something else _anything else_

Sometimes you count.

You count the different lives in your head and your teeth and the number of steps it takes to get from one side of your cage to the next (it’s three long hobbling strides and five short shuffling ones, three and five, three and five and _fifteen_ , an important number, the number of ways one can enchant a magic sword, though everyone else would of course say there are only a dozen…)

and you count the letters in your name _(R-U-M-em-emma_ , that name is important and in a fleeting burst of clarity the voices in your head sing in agreement) except your head can’t agree on what your name is anymore

(you are not Emma but sometimes you think you are because there are names and faces that don’t make sense in your head, that don’t line up with the pair of memories you made peace with at one time, but now there are too many timelines running hot in your head, in your lungs, in your veins)

_it was over it was over but someone had to come along and **ruin** it_

You’re around the cage, looking for the flaw, the assurance _the_ _fracture_ there but there isn’t one. You’re around the cage and the bowl and the wheel, when it’s not one it’s another, come on come on come on _where is it_

_(it’s…chipped)_

but it’s _not_ , and that’s the problem

You need to keep spinning and moving and looking (for that _flaw_ _)_ because if you don’t you know you will have to stop and _think_ and there’s no way to think anymore, not now that your skull is full of static and mix-mashed recollections that _don’t make sense_

The thoughts aren’t yours, not even a little, so they scald your head and bright jitters of pain run up and in through your ears and eyes, ping-burning-hot.

(you planned for everything at one time but you didn’t plan for this _why is that?)_

Sometimes you stop running and pacing and spinning and searching because it gets so glare-burning- _hurt_ so you grind your head against your cage and wish the twisted wires would sink, deep deep deep, into the fragile spark in yourself and silence it all, burn out all the voices.

you were over you were over you were over it was _done_

You were ready to give it up and go and be done but now you’re here and shackled to a metal wavy lifeline, full of harsh power that you reach at again and again and again and _again_ , but it’s barred from you and

you can’t reach

Some days She visits to sneer and gloat and you growl and snap and spit like a wild beast _you can’t go with this…Beast_ but She has your lifeline and taunts you with it, and you can’t do anything but fling tangled-up words

_you could hurl a truly scathing remark at her at one time and completely shatter her_

_what happened_

She gives you food, in bowls but _they’re not right, their rims are undamaged_ and that’s not right and the wheel keeps spinning and the cage’s size is always the same.

perhaps it is the _sameness_ of it all that grates at you

_(the sameness, the sameness, there is a flaw in the cage and the bowl and the wheel but if only you could just find it but they stay stubbornly unchanging)_

names should stay the same but yours doesn’t, because you’ve worn so many names and now you can’t sort through them all _which one was yours?_

you remind yourself to think think think, each day, remember your name and yourself

one day you forget and when you try to remember again it actually takes you a minute

_and you remember -_

and then you don’t

 


End file.
